


Object History

by gusthemoose



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Character Study, Families of Choice, Gen, Post-Canon, mentions of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:13:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25752658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gusthemoose/pseuds/gusthemoose
Summary: A look at Booker through the things and people he left behind.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 102





	Object History

**Author's Note:**

> So, after watching the Old Guard I fell in love with one very sad Frenchman. This is my attempt at looking at Booker from Nile discovering things he left behind. A lot of these items are based on various headcanons I have about Booker and what he'd keep around for two hundred years. 
> 
> Also, no beta. I wrote this over the course of like eight hours because I needed to get it out before I was consumed by sad French. 
> 
> If you've never heard of Josephine Baker you should read about her. She's pretty amazing.

After they leave Booker on the riverbank and bring Copley in they scatter. Just for a few weeks. Nile can feel the tension in the air when it happens. Joe and Nicky look grim. Andy is quiet. They part because they feel they have to. She goes with Andy to train. She needs to learn how to disappear in the modern world. She needs to learn how to fight, though she argues the US Military-Industrial Complex did a good job teaching her that. Apparently, they're not to Andy's standards. 

Nile spends three weeks getting her ass kicked but she felt deadlier by the end of it. She also learns how powerful it feels to wield an ax. It's bad ass. 

They meet again in a little safe house in Belgium after those three weeks. It’s not a run down church this time. It’s a tall, broad building tucked in among other tall, broad buildings right off the river port. Everything about it feels very narrow to Nile and reminds her of her mother’s house on the South Side. 

The mood is better with the family reunited. Joe seems lighter and Nicky smiles a little bit more. Andy is… still Andy. There’s a distance that their time alone together hasn’t quite bridged but Nile takes it as a good sign that she sits at the table to eat dinner with them instead of standing distant from them like before.

Nile goes to get a glass from a glass front cabinet when she spots it. She’s not even sure what it is at first. It’s dim inside the cabinet and gloomy outside meaning not much light gets in the slightly less narrow rooms like the kitchen. She picks it up and feels the weight of it. After turning it over in her hands she realizes it’s a knight on a horse made out of metal. There are a few flecks of paint or maybe enamel on it. The whole thing is pockmarked with age.

“What’s this?” she asks, showing it to the others.

The warm, friendly energy of the room goes cold as everyone looks at her. There’s a ghost in the room and it just brushed past her arm.

“It’s Booker’s,” Joe speaks up and there’s still some harshness to his tone when he says Booker’s name. A few weeks isn’t enough time for forgiveness. It might take those hundred years for them to find it again.

“It belonged to one of his sons,” Nicky adds next, tone deceptively calm. He reminds Nile of a hawk on a power line, watching, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. There's no forgiveness in him either. She's still the only one who sees Booker's actions as understandable. Not justified but the man was a fucking mess.

Nile turns the toy over in her hands as she remembers Booker talking about his kid. Three sons. All dead. The grief still seemed fresh in his mind. She suddenly feels like she’s handling something sacred, like she’s touching the communion cup at church when the minister isn’t there to scold her.

Booker kept this little toy for almost two hundred years. In a case. Not in a cave like Andy’s Rodin which should be in climate control. 

“What happened to them?” She asks because she can’t help herself. She’s learned bits and pieces about them through traveling and fighting and talking but Booker’s the ghost in the room. The empty chair at the table no one wants to mention. "He said one died of cancer."

“The others died too,” Andy throws out, her tone final. Joe and Nicky both demure to her authority. No one’s ready to talk about Booker, apparently.

Nile puts it back right where she found it and carefully closes the cabinet. The air in the room stays chilly.

\---

They burn an illegal diamond mine to the ground in Congo and help the enslaved miners find shelter and safety before they head south to Paarl. They hunker down in a farmhouse surrounded by overgrown grape vines. Someone’s failed attempt at a business that they bought for cheap. 

Nile’s been with them now for two months and they are without a doubt the most terrifying and incredible people she’s ever known. It’s easy to see the love they have for each other and the way they all care. Holy shit, do these people care. Andy’s edges are sharp but Nile can tell she’s softening too. She’s changing without her immortality and it’s changing the others. The time matters more.

The farmhouse is big enough that everyone gets their own rooms which is a crazy luxury when they spent the last mission camping and basically living on top of each other all the time. Nile is so excited that she immediately flops down on the single bed and takes a nap.

When she wakes up she starts making space for her things. They’re going to stay awhile and see how the situation in the Congo plays out. They might need to go back and help some more but they want distance just in case. There’s a paranoia that runs through the group. After Merrick someone could know and it could be bad so distance and care.

Still, Nile can put stuff in drawers and not live out of a duffel bag. She hasn’t had that luxury since before Afghanistan. 

She notices it while putting away her socks. It looks like a scrap of paper wedged into the vanity mirror like she used to do at home with postcards and pictures of celebrities but she can tell it’s not from any modern printing. 

The paper is old and faded. She’s almost scared to touch it, afraid it’ll crumble to dust under her fingers. It’s a drawing of a woman. She’s standing on a cobblestone street with a box hanging from a strap around her neck. The box is full of flowers. The rest of the scene is gone, the edges of the paper black from some sort of fire damage. Nile can’t recognize the artist but it’s definitely hand drawn.

“I drew that.”

She jumps and whips around. Joe is leaning in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest. “Fuck, wear a bell or something.”

He chuckles. “Sorry. You’ll learn how to listen for us.”

“Yeah, great, in the meantime, knock.”

Joe chuckles again before he moves into the room, his hands shoved in the back pockets of his jeans. He stares over her shoulder at the drawing, his expression stormy. Joe’s more outwardly emotional but Nile’s knows it’s like a summer storm. Thunder and heavy rain one minute then sunlight the next. She has no idea how he finds peace so quickly.

“I drew it in in 1875.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Booker’s wife.”

Nile’s does the math in her head. Booker died in 1812 and yeah, no, it’s not a life drawing. Booker’s wife would’ve been dead by then. 

“He asked me to because he started to forget what she looked like. I did his sons too.”

Right, no cameras when Booker died. Nile still has her phone with her brother and mom on it. When she can’t sleep she looks at them and aches. Almost immortality has a lot of benefits but now she’s got a new fear. How long until she forgets them? When will she stop being able to remember the sound of her mother’s voice? Or the games of basketball with her brother after school? When will it all start to fade?

“He used to carry them around in the inside pocket of whatever jacket he had. Until they burned when we made a very bad escape from a very bad situation.” Joe’s frown intensifies for a moment. “He told me they were all gone.”

“Maybe he didn’t want you to feel bad for him,” she offers as they both study the woman in the drawing.

“That man needs to learn the difference between empathy and pity.” Joe takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. His frustration and confusion are evident in the sound. “We’re going to the market to get food. Do you want to come with us?”

\---

Well, they couldn’t avoid caves forever. 

This one is in the Canadian Rockies. They’re tracking some missing indigenous girls that the police are doing nothing about. Nile asked the team to do this one. She remembers other mothers and fathers in the neighborhood crying or shouting about the police ignoring the murders of black children. She can do something about that now.

But, fuck, it’s a cave in the Canadian Rockies and it’s cold, and damp, and she kind of hates it. It’s hard to sleep even on a camping cot with a sleeping bag. She’s learned how to be quiet at night so she can explore the cave away from the group. It’s something to do that takes her mind off the bite in the air and the ache in her cold toes.

She’s got a lantern held up to see the various treasures locked away here. There’s the usual mess of time periods but she’s starting to pick up on who hoards what. Bladed weapons? Andy, though Nicky likes them too. Brushes, pens, inkwells? Joe. 

Something shiny? Booker. 

She picks up a gold coin that glitters in the low light of her lantern. This one is dated 1870. It’s a three dollar coin. Nile turns it over in her hand and looks at the eagle on the back.

“Booker made it.”

Nicky doesn’t startle her this time. Like Joe said, she’s learned the sounds of the team. He’s quieter than anyone else but the echo of the cave helps. 

He crouches next to the chest she found the coin in and pulls out another one. Just like she did he turns it over in his hands and examines it in the low light. “He is a very good forger, especially with metal. We just needed money for a ship out of San Francisco.”

“So, he was a criminal.”

Nicky tosses the coin back with the other trinkets and stands up, his head tilted just slightly. “Yes and no. He forged coins to feed his family. France was… not in a good place before his death. Under Napoleon it was enough to get him conscripted.”

Nicky sounds like a historian recounting some other person’s life. It doesn’t sound like he’s talking about a dear friend, about family. It’s cold and distant. Nile has to really look at him to see the emotion underneath.

“Booker is… was… a survivalist.” There’s a weight in Nicky’s eyes, a real, genuine sorrow. Nile can see the shine of it as he talks even though his tone is calm. “Some would say a con artist. But to survive people will do… many things.”

They’re not talking about the fake coins anymore. Nile knows it like she knows the sounds of Nicky’s footsteps. They’re talking about the betrayal. They’re talking about everything that led up to it and everything that’s happened after.

“Do you know constant stress as a physical effect on the brain?” These people know a million ways to kill but they're not always up on the latest in scientific discoveries. They’re informed. They’re not stupid. What they track and pay attention to is different than the average modern day person.

“Toxic stress they call it. I learned about it in the Marines. It can lead to PTSD because your brain reorders itself. You just live in that survival state of mind. Sometimes, it’s so bad you can’t make rational decisions. You can’t think about anything but surviving.”

She lived in that state for a long time after her daddy died. Her whole family did. Her whole neighborhood. They survived. She survived.

“You need somewhere safe. Somewhere supportive to get you through that.” Nile had the local church and the pastor. That man had been so kind and so gentle when the world around her wasn't and she still wore the cross because of the quiet, steady faith he helped her find.

No amount of side-eyes from Andy could make her give it up.

“We were safe,” Nicky says and sighs almost the exact same way Joe does. They have little mannerisms like that, ways they reflect each other, and seem almost like one person instead of two. “We should’ve been safe for him.”

She shrugs and tosses the coin back. “I’m not a psychologist but clinical depression messes with your thoughts too. Pretty sure I said it before back then.”

“ _L'hai fatto_.” Nicky pauses for a second. “You did.”

\---

Copley’s still tracking traces through history. This time to erase or obscure what he can. Andy doesn’t want anyone else finding the same breadcrumbs he did. Every time they visit him in person, which is rare, his boards have a few more strings and a few more pictures. They glance over it sometimes but with Andy around it’s usually right to business. What’s the mission? Who are they helping? 

Nile takes the time to study the board. It’s so… impressive. The places they’ve been and the war they’ve seen all trying to do what they feel is right. Right is one of those things they sometimes clash over. Nile’s modern view on right and wrong doesn’t always hold with Andy’s or Joe’s or Nicky’s. Might doesn’t always make right. Violence isn’t always the answer. 

They’re working on it.

“This is new,” she says as she pulls down a picture. It’s a display case in a museum titled ‘The French Resistance’. There are weapons, what look like some letters, a few pictures, and a few Nazi medals. 

“Yes. I think Booker is in there.” Copley is seated at his desk. They’re waiting for the others to join them in his office. They like to stagger in so it looks like friends meeting for dinner instead of a team of highly trained and deadly people meeting their informant. “From what I’ve been able to track he spent the majority of World War 2 in Paris with the resistance. I’ve reached out to the museum to see if I can get copies or scans of the pictures.”

There’s not much about Booker on Copley’s boards which Nile wonders about. She would think being the youngest before her and the most modern there would be a lot more to find about him. The Napoleonic Wars have been studied to hell in back because war historians get off on the guy. 

“He may have even worked with Josephine Baker.” 

That name caught Nile’s attention. She looks over her shoulder at Copley who is smiling. He always does when he talks about his work tracking everyone down through the weft and weave of history. 

“She mingled a great deal with very important people at parties and then would do her shows where she would share what she learned with the Free French government and other resistance agents.” Copley rifles through a few papers on his desk and pulls out what looks like a photocopy from a book. “This here is an excerpt from a French resistance member’s journal. He writes about Sebastien coming back from Dordogne with information. Baker worked out of her home there for a large part of the war. He goes on to say Sebastien is the luckiest man he’s ever met having walked away from a Nazi raid that should’ve killed him.”

When she looks skeptical, Copley continues. “Booker’s real name is Sebastien le Livre. And it wasn’t a terribly popular name in France during the time.”

Nile pauses as she considers the picture again. “Still can’t believe his last name is book.”

Copley chuckles. “Yes. Though think of it more like a professional title than a last name. You know, when people immigrated to America and the immigration officer would put down their profession instead of their actual last name because they couldn’t be bothered to spell.”

He gestures to a point on the board farther back from where she’s standing. “I think Booker, or his family, worked with a printing press. Or possibly book binding, again, I don’t have much on his origins outside of Napoleon’s army. It makes sense though. Le Livre. Book.”

“Booker,” she finishes and considers the grainy photo in her hand. “I guess getting killed by Napoleon didn’t dampen his love of country any.”

“I’m sure he hates Napoleon,” Copley says with a note of caution in his voice. “But home is always home no matter the distance or time. My wife and I bought this house together. I thought about moving out when she passed but… there are too many good memories here. Maybe it’s the same for Booker.”

“He saw hate trying to swallow his country, his home, and he rushed to defend it. Maybe his inability to die takes away some of the nobility in his actions but it doesn’t lessen their importance.” Copley is analyzing. Nile noticed he did that a lot. When they briefed on missions and the people involved Copley liked to pick them apart like he’s untangling a knot. Or following footprints in the ether. It’s the CIA in him. Look at a person, figure them out, and maybe figure out how to use them.

Nile can analyze people too. Copley probably used the death of his wife as his way in with Booker. There are hospital records for Jean-Pierre le Livre on the board in the middle of the Booker stuff. Shared some tears over the loss of someone to illness you couldn’t stop. Think of the good it could do. I thought I could cure disease. She sympathizes with Copley because loss is never easy but it’s bullshit in the end. 

He used his grief to justify the capture and experimentation of living people. Nile has forgiven him as much as she can but it’s always in the back of his mind that he did that. He used his grief to nudge Booker into helping or they used each other. An echo chamber that said the ends justifies the means. Two men trying to do some good on the road to Hell.

It's a fucking shame neither man asked for help before it got that far.

She puts the picture back where she found it when the doorbell rings and he gets up to answer it with a polite “Excuse me.”

\---

The apartment in Paris is ruined. There is shattered glass and spilled water across the floor. The kitchen table is on its side while the two chairs are splinters. Bullet holes and blood spatter the walls. It’s almost empty except for the signs of the fight that took place sometime in the past. 

Copley only noticed Booker had gone missing two weeks ago. It’s been eight months since they saw him last. 

“Do you think it’s Merrick’s people?” Nicky asks, his voice hard edged with worry and anger. 

“No, Copley’s watching them too.” Andy is in the middle of the room shoulders drawn up and fists clenched by her side. She was the one that asked Copley to watch Booker. She was the one Copley called when he was able to confirm no one had seen Booker going in and out of his building. She was the one who told them they were going to Paris, fuck a hundred years.

“A competitor?” Joe suggests from the single bedroom. The apartment isn’t much beyond the kitchen. It kind of reminds Nile of her college apartment. Just enough to live in without feeling crushingly claustrophobic. 

“Maybe.” Andy scans the room again, her expression flat and eyes furious. And scared. Even without her immortality it’s rare to see Andy scared. It sends fissure down Nile’s spine. It’s bad if Andy is scared.

But maybe they should be. Someone unknown took down Booker. Or came after Booker. The fight either resulted in his capture or him going so deep that a former CIA agent couldn’t find him. Neither option is good for them. Booker was the easy target because of his exile. They’ll come after the rest of them next.

“Boss.” Joe comes out of the bedroom with a book in his hands. The cover is faded orange in color and it looks old. Nile’s knows it’s Booker’s. The guy was a little cliche because he loved books. She’s seen whole shelves of them in safe houses around the world including a Hemingway draft that had to be worth thousands.

Joe holds the book out to Andy who takes it. Her breath catches as she runs her fingers over the spine and then the title. Nile can’t help but peer at it over her shoulder.

Don Quixote. 

“He wouldn’t leave this behind,” Andy says in that dangerous tone that promises blood. “Not by choice.”

“Unless it’s a clue for us,” Nicky counters as he draws in close. They all draw close to Andy like a protective wall. Like Joe can protect her from her anger, Nicky from her guilt, and Nile from her pain. She knew from watching Andy basically shout Booker back to life in the ruined church and the way they teased each other in the cave there was something special between those two, a bond different from the ones Andy had with Joe and Nicky. There are different types of love out there. 

“Maybe he went to Spain,” Joe suggests.

“Or Rome. Cervantes went there after he was forced to leave Spain.”

There’s a heavy silence full of tension when Nile notices something. “Hey, can I…”

Andy yanks the book away, holding it close to her chest. It’s protective. Instinctive. Everyone pauses for a moment before Andy forces herself to relax and hands over the book.

Nile opens it delicately to what she noticed: a bulge between pages. Inside is a bookmark in what looks like Chinese to her and the leather bracelet Booker typically wore around his wrist. She picks it up and holds it out to Andy who takes it and mutters something under her breath in a language Nile doesn’t know.

“What does it say?”

“I have your book, Andromache.” Andy’s hands start to shake. Joe is quick to put a hand on her arm and support her as she almost falls to her knees. “It’s Quynh. Quynh has Booker.”

“That’s not possible.” Nicky looks to Joe while Joe looks back. Andy is steadier now but her hands are still shaking. “She’s at the bottom of the ocean. You would know if she had escaped.”

All eyes turn to Nile who feels very much like a rabbit in the headlights. “I still dream of drowning. I didn’t dream of any escaping.”

“It’s her writing. It’s her. She got out somehow and she has Booker.” Andy wraps Booker’s bracelet around her wrist and tightens it violently. The shaking has lessened and she shrugs Joe’s support off. “We’re going to find them.”

“Do you think she’d hurt him?” Nile asks.

Andy kicks a bloodied table leg out of her way. “She already has.”


End file.
